“The first time, I looked on it as just helping out my dad,” George explains.  “But it turned out to be a wonderful weekend beside Lake Erie, and we have kept doing it.”   The festival draws all ages, he says, and while the music is acoustic, folks perform their own songs as well as traditional ones.

He downplays the work involved, saying, “The Russian community knows everyone and when everyone likes the idea, then you’re just kind of carried by everyone.”  But he still works several times a week doing all the things needed to make an event successful.

The Russian focus comes naturally.  George was born in Moscow, though his family migrated to Israel when he was 3 years old.  In 1998, they moved to Richmond Hill, Ontario.

He came to Carleton planning to study Law, but Economics grew on him.  He decided to pursue a minor in Economics at the time the economy turned sour in 2007, but eventually opted for a full-fledged major.  As a result, he’s pursuing separate undergraduate degrees in both subjects simultaneously.    He’ll wrap up the Economics degree this spring, he hopes, and plans to return in the fall to complete Law and take graduate work in Economics.   Meanwhile, he has also completed a mortgage agent’s course at Seneca College.

George says a common thread runs through the two disciplines.  “In some sense, law and economics both govern human interactions in social settings.  They both look at the rational human.  They are two paradigms that solve the same problem, since both create predictability through economic incentives and legal contracts.”

He gets a leg up on course work by exploiting such resources as open courseware and the library.  “The standard, basic information is already out there, so I try to get as much of what’s available out of the way before taking a course,” he says.  “There’s less pressure and I can do it at my own pace.  I learn a lot better that way.  Then I can ask the professors about things that come to my mind during class.”

A member of the campus Conservative club since second year, he helped canvass in Ottawa Centre during the 2008 election and has also volunteered in the offi ces of two MPs.  He says he was apolitical in high school, but was drawn to politics by the 2008 election.  “Having political friends sustained that interest,” he adds.

He now believes being active in a party gives youth some ownership over political outcomes.  “Most people feel they can’t really influence things.  But on the flip side, people who are heavily involved are not that big a group, so if certain people decide they want to change something, it’s easy to get into politics.  And paradoxically the small numbers mean each one has more influence.”

He has also canvassed on behalf of the university – speaking to prospective students and their parents at the recent March Break event organized by Carleton’s recruitment office.  “I talked about Economics as an asset rather than a career in itself,” he says.  “You can think about economics everywhere.  Game theory is applicable to everything in life.  That message seemed to really sell to people.”

Selling paper bags.  Counting soup labels.  Promoting good study habits.  Arguing both sides of a legal case in Canada’s most prestigious moot court competition.

For second-year Law student Shanelle Manhue, all that is part of extracurricular life at Carleton.

Take the paper bags, for example.   She sold them at $5 a pop to raise funds for the campus edition of Relay for Life, a fundraiser sponsored by the Canadian Cancer Society.  Each bag was decorated, lit from the inside by candle, and used to decorate the Field House at evening receptions honouring cancer survivors and their families.  ”It was a time for them to get together, remember their fight with cancer, and celebrate that they beat it,” she says.  “It turned out really well.”

As part of the relay’s finance committee, she also sorted, counted and rolled donation money.  She remembers having to sort out one bag with $150 in coins.  “People who brought cheques were very much appreciated,” she laughs.

But that was good preparation for the soup labels.  For the past two years, Shanelle has volunteered for Carleton’s Day of Service, and this year was assigned to a local agency that teaches literacy skills.  She helped prepare activities for young clients, but also counted some 4,000 Campbell’s soup labels the agency could cash in to buy computers. 

During her first year, she was a wellness representative for the Health and Counselling office, promoting residence sessions aimed at helping students adjust to university life.  “First-year students are stressed out.  They’ve moved out of their parents’ house, are in a foreign city, and don’t know how to cope,” Shanelle says. 

She benefited from the speakers herself, she says, learning how to avoid being overwhelmed. “In high school I’d lock myself in my room for days before exams.  But I now realize I can take a breather once in a while – walk, read a book, watch TV, anything to take my mind off studying.  And it helps me to remember what I was studying for those four hours before.”

But her biggest activity is surely being part of Carleton’s moot court team, organized by the Law Student Society (CULSS).  As one of a dozen members, Shanelle spent the last few months preparing to argue a case at Osgoode Hall Law School, in an annual undergraduate competition that attracted a record 52 teams this year.  Though she’d been a member of CULSS, she admits she wasn’t really involved until she tried out for the team.

The team prepared for the competition by practising mock trials based on actual court cases.  After finding out in mid-February what this year’s case would be, Shanelle and the others researched both sides.  Participants weren’t told what side they would have to argue until five minutes before they were to appear in court.  “It was very intense, very fast-paced,” says Shanelle, “but it was so much fun.”

Here involvement in CULSS goes up a notch next year when she’ll head the finance portfolio.

Shanelle’s extra-curricular activity has always been on the upswing.  She says she wasn’t active in extracurricular life until Grade 12 – and even then, just to have something for her resume.  But after participating in a Salvation Army toy drive and organization of the senior prom, she says, “I thought it was incredible, amazing.” 

Until high school, Shanelle wanted to be a doctor (“and then biology happened”), but a career test suggested a career in law.  “I watch a lot of CSI, some Law and Order,” she says, “and it’s exhilarating.  It’s my passion.“ 

Pointing to work she’s done with the Wrongful Conviction and Injustice Association, Shanelle says: “The legal system, which says it’s to be helping people, is hurting people at the same time.  I want to fix that.”

Sponsored by the Carleton University Legal Studies Society (CULSS), Carleton’s team included Michael De Luca, Shelbi Dippold, Evan Hamilton, Devin Harm, Christina Hebert, Shanelle Manhue, Laura Mcintosh, Sinini Sibanda, Tanya Treciokas, Erik Vallillee, Layla Warsame, and Sarah Willis, all enrolled in the Carleton’s Law program.

Comprising two students each, the teams competed in the largest Osgoode Cup in history, which included 46 other teams from universities across Canada.

The De Luca-Hamilton and the Vallillee-Harm teams advanced to the eighth round. They were ultimately defeated by the eventual Cup winners and runners up from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.  De Luca and Vallillee were named among the top ten distinguished oralists.

Resistance Hip Hop. Testimonials.  Documentaries.  A chance to meet a great Canadian. These are images, stories and experiences Melanie Adrian’s Intro to Law students are not likely to soon forget.

Adrian’s course explores three human rights systems – the Americas, Africa and Europe.  Students examine one human rights violation in each of those areas, and trace it from the ground all the way the United Nations.  Far from relying on readings and textbooks, Adrian presents her students with real life case studies that include a woman in Argentina whose three children have disappeared, and child soldiers in Africa.

“It can be kind of boring learning about institutions,” says Adrian. “But if you engage the students in the first week with a real person, a real family, a real set of circumstances, who take cases to the regional domestic courts, and from there to the regional human rights system, and from there, they take it to the UN, then the understanding and engagement is different.”

Adrian has also included an anthropological perspective to the course through the inclusion of resistance hip hop.

“It brings in that voice of resistance,” says Adrian, “and it fits in very well with the human rights themes, because it brings in someone who’s commenting on what’s happening.”

Adrian encourages her students to listen to resistance hip hop and apply it to the themes they are exploring the course. The “extra-credit challenge,” involves finding a piece of hip hop resistance music, and submitting it to Adrian for discussion in class.

“I have between two and six different submissions, typically.  They have to give me the link and the lyrics and they have to write a paragraph on why they think that this particular song is important for us to listen to, and they have to make the case for it,” she says. “And at the beginning of class they come up to the front and they explain why they’ve chosen this song and how it links to that week’s themes or readings, or our general discussion.”

Adrian has also arranged for Roméo Dallaire to visit the class to discuss his book, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers.

“He’s going to speak about child soldiers in Africa, which is exactly what we’re studying,” says Adrian. In preparation for his visit, she screened the documentary film, Blood Diamond. She hopes that Dallaire, having worked with regional human rights systems in Africa, will be able to show her students some practical realities, as he sees them.

Intro to Law is a required course for the ArtsOne cluster, Human Rights and Democracy.  The cluster focuses on politics, law and human rights, and the relationship between them.